By Joseph Langley and Autumn Pecarovich
Strange things happen in the mountains…
As the leaves begin to turn and the temperature drops, the power turns off, and the creepiest of stories begin to emerge. Minarets students, coming from foothills and other remote areas, have a wide array of these stories. They were eager to share their experiences and warning tales…
… “We have a shelf over our fireplace in our house and we have things on it,” said Senior Ashely Bell, “We had pictures up there of the family. One night at 1 in the morning everything just fell. The glass from the pictures was cracked. Another night we were watching a movie and this board from a wall in the house fell for no reason and no one was near it. Our house is haunted. The original owner’s daughter died and I'm pretty sure she is still there because weird stuff happens all the time. One night there was tapping on my door and I opened it and no one is there..... like uhhhh.... okay."
Sophomore Madison Parra had a scary story of her own to share, “On Friday the 13th at 3
a.m. I played an Ouija board. It spelled out, slowly, letter by letter, B... L... O... O... D... I took my hands off without saying goodbye-- your not supposed to do that-- and my nose started to bleed a lot... a lot. It wouldn't stop and so I had to go to the hospital and found out I had internal bleeding. They still don't know what caused it. Then for six weeks at 3 a.m. I would wake up hearing strange scratches at the edge of my hearing. My mom had to have the house cleansed.”
“For my birthday this year, I went ghost hunting in northern California," said junior Corrin Nielsen. "One of the creepiest places we went to was the Preston Castle, things moved on their own, we got super-high readings on the EMF meter, and were grabbed by things we could not see.”
Teacher Wendy Swanson had a story of her own to share. “When I was a kid, my family went camping at "Browns Creek" (above Bass Lake). We were chased out of our campsite by something, and to this day all 6 of us remember the story so clearly." She summarized the scary tale, and a fleshed out, interpreted version goes as such.
"...We had the only campsite available, and it was the best one. It appeared the people who left before we arrived left in a hurry. As we set up camp, we began noticing a few strange happenings. Terrifying happenings. Every once and a while, the sound of the creek flowing by the camp would stop. During the night, my little brother woke up heaving, and throwing up. The air was thick and musty. Something started banging and thrashing at my parent's tent, in ways that shouldn't have been possible. My stepmom got a gun and stood guard, while the rest of us ran to the car, quickly packing up. She saw a pair of yellow eyes high up watching us which didn't seem to be in a tree. We finally packed up our campsite and drove away but something dark and larger than our truck flew over the top of us.”
“I had a nightmare about 3 porcelain dolls," stated freshman Dawn Garcia, "they were chasing me with knives. When I woke up three porcelain dolls were in my bed.”
“One evening after a long day at school, I got off the bus and walked home," senior Luke
Longatti began, "I opened my door, set my bag and jacket on the couch and walked down the hallway to go to the bathroom, About a quarter of the way down the hall I looked up and saw something very strange... I saw a tall, slender, incredibly dark shadow of a person standing at the end of the hall. I froze, looked behind me, there was no light that could cast such a shadow. I walked slowly forward and it moved around the corner, toward my room. I sped up as I walked the rest of the way down the hall and as I turned the corner my bedroom door slammed shut. I approached it slowly and nervously opened the door. The room was completely empty and the window was shut, no chance that it was the wind.
My property has always had a bit of a history with the paranormal. Located nearby is the site of a Native American village and the site of the barracks of a former Chinese work camp.”
As the sun sets on the eve of Halloween, Minarets gears up for a day of fun and fright. Students don their creative costumes making sure to leave their masks at home. Stay safe tomorrow, because you never know what lies behind each closed door.
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